Gouverneur Morris

Gouverneur Morris

Author

Website Name

History.com

Year Published

2009

Title

Gouverneur Morris

URL

http://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/gouverneur-morris

Access Date

March 03, 2015

Publisher

A+E Networks

Introduction

Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816) was an American politician, public official and diplomat. Born into a prominent New York family, he earned election to the state’s provincial congress, and signed the Articles of Confederation as a New York delegate to the Continental Congress. Among the most vocal participants of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Morris argued for granting Congress veto powers over state laws, direct election of the president and proportional representation in Congress based on taxation. Morris served as American minister to France from 1792-94, and as a New York senator from 1800-03. He later helped form the New-York Historical Society and was the founding chairman of the Erie Canal Commission.

Born into a New York family distinguished for its wealth, lineage, and political influence, Morris lost his leg in a carriage accident as a young man. He graduated from King’s College (now Columbia University) and in 1771 was admitted to the bar. In 1775, he was elected to New York’s provincial congress and in 1776 served on committees that drafted the state’s new constitution and that instructed New York’s delegates to the Second Continental Congress to support the Declaration of Independence. In 1778, as a New York delegate to the Continental Congress, he signed the Articles of Confederation. Two years later Morris became the Confederation’s assistant superintendent of finance under his political mentor, Robert Morris of Pennsylvania. In that post, he sought to expand the powers of the federal government and drafted a report to Congress recommending the first national currency-a decimal coinage based on the Spanish dollar.

Morris declined his friend Alexander Hamilton’s invitation to contribute to The Federalist and played no role in the ratification of the Constitution. After travel in Europe on private business and a brief mission to Great Britain in 1790, Morris was named American minister to France (1792-1794). In that post he was critical of the French Revolution; his Diary, published in the 1880s, is a notable eyewitness account of the Terror. In 1794, after the United States demanded the recall of the French ambassador, Edmond Genet, the French in retaliation demanded Morris’s recall. Genet had shown his contempt for the Washington administration by trying to foment American support for France in its wars with the rest of Europe, despite Washington’s announced policy of neutrality. For his part, Morris had attempted a daring but impractical scheme to rescue Louis XVI and his family from the revolutionary authorities.

In 1800, Morris was elected a senator from New York, serving until 1803. In 1804, he helped found the New-York Historical Society and delivered the eulogy for Hamilton at Trinity Church. He was also the founding chairman of the Erie Canal Commission (1810-1816). In opposing the War of 1812, he went so far as to urge that New York and the New England states secede from the Union. When he died, his passing was regretted even by his political adversaries.